Beijing needs another intervention to slash industrial excess Financial Times Europe9 Jul 2026Edward White edward.white@ft.com In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Zhu Rongji, a cha ris matic Chinese premier, tookthe scythe to large swaths of the coun try’s polit ic ally power ful state-owned enter -prises. Under Zhu’s slo gan of “zhua da, fang xiao” or “grasp the large, let go of thesmall”, Beijing retained its grip on stra tegic indus tries while relin quish ing con trolof a vast sea of smal ler com pan ies and factor ies. The cuts ripped through China’snorth-east ern rust belt. Thou sands of mines, steel mills and other indus trial siteswere shut for good. An estim ated 30mn to 40mn work ers lost their jobs. The pro cess was deemed pain ful but neces sary: not only in set ting up China’s acces -sion to the World Trade Organ iz a tion in 2001, but in free ing Beijing from sup port -ing uneco nomic indus tries. Dec ades on and indus trial over ca pa city again looms large over Chi...
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U.S. Biotechs Step Up Secrecy To Beat Chinese Drug Copycats Companies use new playbook to stay ahead of efficient pipeline overseas BY XAVIER MARTINEZ Steve Potts develops medicines for hard-to-treat cancers. Just don’t ask what, exactly, he is working on. If word gets out, he fears a Chinese company could beat him to market. Potts’s company, whose team shepherded 13 drugs through Food and Drug Administration approval, is one of a growing number of biotechs going to extreme lengths to stay secret. He won’t pitch venture-capital firms. He hasn’t presented at academic conferences. The company, Breakthru Medicine, is taking money only from a handful of trusted, high-net-worth individuals and universities. For decades, young biotechs broadcast their science to attract investment. Today, more are going dark to keep rivals, many of which are in China, from replicating their research and doing studies in humans faster than they can. “You have to be much more thoughtful with how much y...
Taiwan Catching China Is Pure Economic 'Prosperidade' July 10, 2026 at 5:00 AM GMT+10 Boom times in Taiwan. Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images Save Translate Takeaways by Bloomberg AI Taiwan’s economy ranks just 21st in the world in size at $884 billion. Yet the home to 23 million people living 155 miles from Fuzhou between the East and South China seas – a place Portuguese sailors called Formosa, which means beautiful island - is a world beater. Gross domestic product expanded 8.8% in 2025, and the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg shows even faster growththis year of 9.5%, or more than three times the global economy overall. Both mark a reversal from as recently as 2023, when the island was a laggard on the world stage, with GDP increasing a meager 1.1%. Investors have taken notice, making Taiwan home to the fifth-biggest stock market - and gaining on those in the US, China, Japan and Hong Kong. World Beater Economists forecast Taiwan's gross domesti...
THERE IS NO GRAND PLAN ON IRAN In the late 1950s, Egyp tian Pres id ent Gamal Abdel Nas ser quipped to CIA oper at iveMiles Cope land that “the genius of you Amer ic ans is that you never make clear-cutstu pid moves, only com plic ated stu pid moves”. The words were spoken at a time when Amer ica was still seen as some what morebene vol ent than former European colo nial powers. This polit ical cap ital wouldsoon be squandered as the US, fear ing the spread of com mun ism, sought to con tainlocal nation al ism in the Middle East but ended up push ing some coun tries closer tothe Soviet Union. Amer ica's stu pid moves, Nas ser said, made people “won der at thepos sib il ity that we might be miss ing something”. When the US and Israel killed Iran's supreme leader Ali Khame nei on Feb ru ary 28,many in the region pondered the pos sib il ity of a new grand plan. Gulf coun tries hadwarned Wash ing ton against the war, cau tion ing it would endanger them and ineffect close the Strait...
SK Hynix’s jumbo share sale is a sign of AI exuberance Financial Times Europe10 Jul 2026 South Korea dom in ates the mar ket for memory chips — but it’s the US that is theland of cap ital-rais ing oppor tun ity. Korean group SK Hynix has turned to New Yorkfor its sale this week of around $28bn in Amer ican depos it ary receipts. The pro -ceeds will help fund its enorm ous AI-related invest ment plans. And the price atwhich the ADRs trade will be a use ful gauge of how exuber ant the AI land scape hasbecome. The deal is the biggest-ever share sale in the US by a for eign com pany, sur pass ingAlibaba’s $25bn float in 2014. The sale size, as well as some jit ters about the rush ofAI-related invest ment, have con trib uted to a roughly one-quarter fall in the chip -maker’s Seoul shares in the past fort night. AI believ ers may shrug: the stock hasbeen swinging wildly for months, hav ing moved over 5 per cent in either dir ec tionon 50 occa sions this year — and has still man aged to c...
Ukraine’s Drones Are Now Reaching Siberia and Imperiling Russian Energy Assets Listen (10 min) A fire at an oil refinery in Omsk, Russia, on Monday, following Ukraine's drone strikes. Social Media/UGC/Reuters By Quick Summary A Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s largest refinery in Omsk triggered a ban on diesel exports and intensified the country’s fuel crisis. The attack marks a major expansion in the range of Ukraine’s deep strikes, reaching a facility nearly 1,500 miles away from Kyiv-controlled land. The expanding range of Ukrainian drones forces Russia to defend a vast additional swath of territory when its air defenses are already stretched. This summary was generated with AI and reviewed by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism. A Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s largest refinery in Omsk triggered a ban on diesel exports and intensified the country’s fuel crisis. Several Ukrainian drones circled over Russia ’s largest refinery ...
Can Wall Street keep turning a blind eye to Trump’s enrichment? Louisa Clarence-Smith President Trump has benefited from looser regulation of cryptocurrencies Next image › ‘‘ Wall Street executives have been quietly holding their noses at the smell emanating from President Trump and his family’s self-enrichment in office. However, a filing showing that Trump has made at least $2.2 billion since his inauguration in January last year has provoked some cautious expressions of outrage. After the report was published by the US Office of Government Ethics, Lloyd Blankfein, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, took to social media to call out alleged selfdealing and “extremism” in American politics, in a statement that did not name Trump directly but was widely interpreted to refer at least in part to his business interests. In a post on X before the fourth of July celebrations for America’s 250th birthday, Blankfein contrasted politicians failing to challenge wrongdoing i...